c - warning: assignment makes integer from pointer without a cast

Question

When I declare a char * to a fixed string and reuse the pointer to point to another string

/* initial declaration */
char *src = "abcdefghijklmnop";
.....

/* I get the   "warning: assignment makes integer from pointer without a cast" */
*src ="anotherstring";

I tried to recast the pointer but no success.

Answer 1

When you write the statement

*src = "anotherstring";

the compiler sees the constant string "abcdefghijklmnop" like an array. Imagine you had written the following code instead:

char otherstring[14] = "anotherstring";
...
*src = otherstring;

Now, it's a bit clearer what is going on. The left-hand side, *src, refers to a char (since src is of type pointer-to-char) whereas the right-hand side, otherstring, refers to a pointer.

This isn't strictly forbidden because you may want to store the address that a pointer points to. However, an explicit cast is normally used in that case (which isn't too common of a case). The compiler is throwing up a red flag because your code is likely not doing what you think it is.

It appears to me that you are trying to assign a string. Strings in C aren't data types like they are in C++ and are instead implemented with char arrays. You can't directly assign values to a string like you are trying to do. Instead, you need to use functions like strncpy and friends from <string.h> and use char arrays instead of char pointers. If you merely want the pointer to point to a different static string, then drop the *.